AUSTIN — Despite the escalating cost of college, only 59 percent of Texas students earn degrees in six years, and even fewer finish in four.

The shining ideal of a four-year college experience is increasingly out of reach for many nontraditional students. That has consequences for the state, including rising costs, and for students, with financial aid dollars spread thinner and more debt they must incur along the way.

A handful of bills that Gov. Rick Perry backs, such as tying state funds to graduation rates, would try to address the issue. But with just one week left to force bills through the Legislature, major changes are unlikely.

Over the past 20 years, graduation rates have improved incrementally, Dallas Morning News research shows. The statewide six-year rate stands at 59 percent, up from 48 percent for students who entered college in 1987.

Just 30 percent of 2012 graduates received their degree in four years. While that’s better than the 18 percent who graduated in four years in 1999, policymakers are nonetheless concerned that students are taking too long, and that so many aren’t graduating at all.

“Everything is gradual in higher ed,” said Dewayne Matthews, vice president for strategy and policy at the Lumina Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on higher education. “The fact that there’s change at all is probably heartening.”

The numbers languished partly because from 2000 to 2007, colleges concentrated their efforts on luring more students, especially those from populations who don’t traditionally enroll in college, into classrooms.

Only recently did the state turn its attention to the final chapter: graduation.

“Your mother would’ve killed you if you’d taken longer than four years; mine would have killed me the same way,” Matthews said. “But if you’re the first to go to college, you don’t know the rules.”

It’s difficult to compare graduation rates on a national stage because every state has a different method of tracking the data. But in 2010, Texas ranked 39th in adults holding a degree. Just 33.7 percent of the state’s adults were college graduates.

Nontraditional student

The rise of the nontraditional student — those who have families, must work full time, or are first-generation students — is a factor.

Also at work are a lack of guidance and transferable credits between institutions, and “bottleneck courses” that fill up quickly, forcing some students to delay graduation.

Many students are also ill-prepared when they arrive at college, slowing their progress and pushing many to drop out.

Mary Baswell ticks almost all the boxes.

Baswell, 30, floundered when it came to picking a major. She entered Lamar State College-Orange in 2001 and in 2005 transferred to Lamar University, switching her major three times before settling on English. She got married, and, starting in 2006, she took three semesters off to give birth to her son, Dravin.

“The first half, if not more, of my undergraduate career was basically me fumbling around in the dark,” she said. “Academic advisers were absolutely no help, but I wouldn’t have even known what to ask them.”

When Baswell finally walked across the stage in December 2010, nine years after she began her undergraduate studies, “it was underwhelming.”

“I may be one of those students politicians want to get rid of,” she said. “I got ‘free’ money for school and basically wasted a number of years and lots of money.”

With the decrease in state funding for universities and the booming college price tag — up 55 percent since 2003-04 — tuition, fees and cost of living for an extra year can add up to about $15,000. Baswell said she owes $25,000 for her undergraduate career.

To make costs for a degree more predictable, Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, offered a measure to require universities to tell first-time students the difference in cost depending on if they take four, five or six years to graduate. It has passed the Senate and is awaiting a vote in the House.

A provision in the state budget would tie 10 percent of community college funding and 100 percent of technical college funding to completion rates, a Perry-backed plan that Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, pushed for. State funding is currently allocated based on enrollment growth.

Another bill by Branch, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, would require universities to offer students a fixed tuition rate for four years. It would also create a common course numbering system to ease the transfer of credits between colleges. It has passed the House and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

The effects of recent legislation, like a 2011 law requiring students to pick a degree plan after taking 45 credit hours, won’t be noticeable until further down the road.

The “B-On-Time” loan program, created in 2003, uses financial aid to discourage students from taking too many credits and to provide incentive for timely graduation. But Dominic Chavez, spokesman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, said not many institutions or their governing boards were looking closely at the rate of completions until about 2007, when the idea of linking funding to graduation rates surfaced.

1st-generation students

A particular challenge is first-generation students such as Baswell because they often lack role models to turn to for help. She said that while her parents were supportive when she decided to pursue a degree, “they never told us you need to go to college, it’s something good.”

The summer after her graduation, she separated from her husband and enrolled at UT-Austin, her first year funded by the McNair Scholars Program. Over the summer, she will graduate with her master’s degree in journalism before throwing herself back into the academic world for five more years to get a doctorate in communication studies.

“I will be 35 when I earn my Ph.D.,” she said. “I could be 35 and not have an education. I’d rather go to school and be a low-income student than try to find a job as a single mom, live paycheck-to-paycheck and have far less opportunities than I’m creating for myself now.”

She wants to teach, she said, and hopes her accomplishment is a source of inspiration for her son.

“My son will grow up with deeply ingrained educational values because he sees how long and hard I’ve worked to get where I am,” Baswell said. “So I’ll take quality over quantity any day.”

How to raise rate

Schools and states could do more by offering financial aid for summer courses or raising the number of credits for full-time enrollment from 12 to 15, a number currently tied to Pell Grant standards, said Raymund Paredes, commissioner of the higher education board.

James Spaniolo, outgoing president of UT-Arlington, said increasing the enrollment standard can’t be done unilaterally.

“The important thing is to help students finish their degrees,” he said.

UTA attributes its recent rise in conferred degrees to the 2010 launch of University College, a tutoring, advising and counseling center.

David Laude, UT-Austin’s senior vice provost for enrollment and graduation management, said the campus has focused on freshmen and at-risk students for 20 years. Now, it’s working on growing blended learning courses and improving advising. In the fall, online profiles will inform students of their time to degree.

Laude said schools can also gauge a student’s chance of timely completion based on traits shared with other students who have graduated. If a student works off campus — a deterrent to finishing quickly — UT could create a paid work study on campus, Laude said.

Branch noted that “the old style model was, ‘Hey, that’s the student’s responsibility,’ but the institutions are now realizing that sort of laissez faire approach to students was not working.”

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